Manchester United missed out on signing Gary Lineker, John Barnes, Paul Gascoigne, Alan Shearer and Zinedine Zidane during Martin Edwards' time at Old Trafford , the club's former chairman has confirmed.

The 72-year-old served as United's chairman from 1980 until 2002 and was the man responsible for appointing both Ron Atkinson and Sir Alex Ferguson as the club's managers.

Edwards also took on a hands-on role in transfer negotiations and helped get a number of transfers over the line, including the Bryan Robson, Eric Cantona, Peter Schmeichel, Denis Irwin and Roy Keane deals.

And, following the release of his auto- biography, Red Glory , he has now confirmed some other stellar names could have joined that list.

"Paul Gascoigne was certainly one [we missed out on]," he told MUTV . "We thought he was coming but he decided to join Tottenham. I think there were certain last-minute inducements involved.

"I’d done the negotiations for Alan Shearer and again, I thought he was coming. But [Blackburn owner] Jack Walker was very adamant he wasn’t coming to Manchester United. It was a case of ‘over my dead body’ but he allowed him to go to Newcastle.

Read More

"Gary Lineker, as you know, was going to sign for Everton and his agent Jon Holmes rang me on the day and said: ‘We’re about to go on the train to sign for Everton but his first choice would be Manchester United, if you want him to come.’ I put it to Ron [Atkinson] and he said: ‘I’ve got four strikers already. The last thing we need is another striker.’ So we passed on that one.

"With John Barnes, Graham Taylor rang Alex Ferguson to see if he wanted to take him before he signed for Liverpool. Alex passed on him because it was his first season, he had Jesper Olsen in his squad and he wanted to see whether Jesper would make it.

"When Zidane was at Bordeaux, Les Kershaw, the chief scout, was telling me we should be interested in him and I mentioned it to Alex. Alex said that Eric [Cantona] had also mentioned Zidane to him but Alex felt Zidane played in the same position as Eric.

"Having gone over to France to persuade Eric to re-sign for us, after the Crystal Palace incident, he felt that, if he had brought Zidane in, it may have affected Eric’s position, so he stuck with Eric."